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Guardian Angel HarukiThe Final Hollow - vs Moebius A
Goldlewis, Therion, Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Edward
Word Count: 3504 (+4x2)
Falcon, Goldlewis and Ganondorf darted around the standoff between the simply standing there As and the defensively postured unliving allied minions, and went to town, tearing doppelgangers apart with relative ease. This did not, unfortunately, give A much pause, as he simply replaced them, and then unleashed horror upon the living. A vision of a world made of flesh, the same flesh, of which they were mere extensions.
For Ganondorf’s part, he focused his initial attacks on the A that he reeled in with Mortal Coil after Falcon’s assault had ended. It wasn’t long before the doppelganger itself was vanquished, and the warlord snarled when it was simply replaced by another one. Clearly they were going to have to identify the ‘correct’ A in order to wear him down. Meanwhile, the Captain didn’t let himself get discouraged. After his opening move, he left that doppelganger for Ganondorf and directed his attacks toward a different doppelganger until it, too, fell. When it became clear that the Consul was able to replace his doppelgangers, Falcon simply assumed they’d have to keep fighting in order to figure out what makes this guy tick.
”urgh, worse than the abyss” Edward complained, clutching his head and notably seeing a bit worse off than everyone else as a result of it, before asking ”what was that?”
”Good question.” Falcon said, his own confusion fairly evident in his tone. Ganondorf said nothing, whether or not this was affecting him or if he was just good at hiding it was unknown.
"A mental attack..." was Therion's guess. He had kept to the back line, letting the others that had joined this side of the conflict go at it in melee while he flicked blades at the various Consul copies.
He didn't like that A had done nothing so far but summon clones and take punishment, especially coupled with Sandalphon's warning. It was setting off some alarm bells in his head - was he setting something up? That vision was surely his doing. Whether there was some condition he had to meet or if he just preferred to go after their minds rather than their bodies, there were no good outcomes the thief could envision. He glanced over his shoulder at the girls, and finding that they had the flood handled well he turned back to the squad of A, narrowed his eyes, and moved up.
While the beings of flesh quailed under the stressful assault, those of metal and bone strode forwards, heedless to the horrors. Midna’s darknut raised its broadsword, large as a man, up high, and then slammed it down onto A himself. What that attack enjoyed in might it lacked in finesse, however, and the copy managed to dodge out of the greatsword’s way. Meanwhile the four towering golems responded to the attack automatically, thrusting spears forwards even as the incantation was initiated, slamming four sword sized speartips into the fresh, and whole doppelgangers.
Faced with the artificial legion, the copies pulled back. ”Cruel machinations spring to life with a singular purpose,” the copies criticized.
Whether that gave them time to recover, or A was simply continuing to be very lax in his offence, was unclear, but Edward for one saw how this fight seemed to be going, and dropped out of defence tactics and shifted into offence. At his order, the golems began attacking proactively rather than reactively, promptly stabbing their targets over and over with their burning, armor sundering, dragon dance empowered blades, unceasing and untiring in their assault.
He meanwhile flicked his magelock pistol around and pumped a round into the one Goldlewis had begun minigunning, the oversized round aimed right at one of the two halves of the foe's head, while his pyrobat was resummoned do douse it in a wave of firebreath.
Between the bullets and the blazing flames the Imperfect Copy sustained enough punishment to seriously damage its aberrant body, but it also witnessed enough to make a woefully informed decision. Before it could be destroyed, its misshapen body extended for It Chooses, lancing Edward just below the collarbone with a fanged, sinuous tentacle. His skin crawled as his blood circulated fell magic, and with veins glowing a loathsome red he reeled, both stunned and marked.
The marked marker collapsed to one knee, and his buckler hand hit the ground for support as his body briefly refused complex commands. His golems still had them however, and continued their tireless assault on the creations of flesh. The creation of bone meanwhile simply stood guard, its mistress presently preoccupied with her own actions to give it more complex instructions.
Therion had chosen to avoid the more unnerving looking one when he moved with the intent to add his own anti-buffs to the situation. When in doubt about what sort of debilitation to use, there was rarely a time when Armor Corrosive was the wrong choice. Therion darted towards the original A, weaving around the heavyweights and jutting his dagger out to cut a harsh line into the Consul at the same time that the defense debuff took effect.
It wasn't difficult to keep track of the 'real' A, if that even mattered at all. For all Therion knew the Consul might be able to do something crazy like shift his consciousness between the mutated clones. Even so, the original remained his target as he ended up on the other side of the man after his attack. His dagger was raised defensively and his tail swished behind as he faced the man down, the Consul situated between him and the darknut.
Even without the defense debuff, a dagger to the torso would have left a grisly wound, so with Armor Corrosive in place Therion’s weapon carved through A’s contemptible flesh with ease. His was no ordinary body, however, and even after such savagery, the Consul remained standing. He lifted his arms into strange positions as he prepared to cast magic, then performed a wrenching motion. Though the thief might brace himself for an arcane attack, he would find himself unharmed. The same couldn’t be said for A’s real target: Edward. Blood burst from within the tactician’s body as if leaping at A’s command, that painful ejection made all the more injurious by the mark from It Chooses. It left Edward bleeding and stressed, yet even then it was only the prelude. Amidst the golems’ assault, the two Perfect Copies also cast Reunion in quick succession, all focused on Edward in an effort to burst the commander down as fast as possible.
”Suffer not the lame horse,” their voices resounded. ”Nor the broken man.
Therion quickly realized what was going on when the retaliation he expected to come was directed at someone else instead. His eyes widened and his fur bristled. If the Consul and his copies were going to target them one by one, the fact that the Seekers with healing abilities were on the other side of the battlefield or otherwise engaged would be a huge problem. "Damn it," he hissed.
With the aim of eliminating one of the copies and slowing their ability to cast, Therion used his Battle Boost and shot forward at the copy he'd already targeted. His dagger sank into the man and cut as he drew it up and out and repeated the process, stabbing at normally vital areas. The A was torn apart more easily than he expected, and when the original went down and the other copies didn't so much as flinch it unfortunately proved that Therion's first instinct was wrong. So if the first copy didn't matter, what did? There was one anomaly among the copies, the only one. It must be that thing, the thief thought.
”Ryuugeki Ken!” Falcon shouted as he tried to get back on the offensive. He’d sprinted to another of the A doppelgangers and opened with a close-range fire blast from his hands. Immediately after that he performed a backflip in order to launch his leg into an upward kick intended to launch the doppelganger into the air, ”Ryuuzanshou!” Falcon cried as he landed back onto the ground with a crouch before launching himself up the doppelganger for a follow up ”Ryuuga!” Falcon’s flurry of blows was enough to dispatch it, but as with the one before it those that remained gave no discernible reaction.
Ganondorf, meanwhile, had chosen to go on the hunt for a different doppelganger. He hurled his trident forward at them before launching forward to snatch it from the air while bringing his free arm in for a clothesline smash. He followed that by attempting an upward sweep that would let him launch into a brief aerial barrage of attacks with the trident as well. In the meantime, his Moblins chose to focus their fire on a third A doppelganger. Unfortunately, neither the Captain nor the Warlord had caught on to the notion of needing to find an Imperfect Copy yet, and were thus still simply trying to eliminate doppelgangers however way they could.
The thief snaked his way around them, letting the two take care of their chosen copies while he made his way toward the imperfect eldritch one that Goldlewis and Edward had been facing. He wasn't sure of his hypothesis but since that monstrosity was the only odd one out, he figured there was a better chance that it was more important somehow. He was ready to be totally wrong for a second time though. At the same time, the veteran’s salvo came to an end and he charged forward to try and take the Imperfect Copy’s attention. “C’mon and hit me!” Goldlewis barked, He sank his fist into the horror’s body with a hefty haymaker, where it stuck as if immersed in glue. Without hesitation he unleashed a blast from his shotgauntlet to free his hand, then took hold of his coffin for a big whack. “I’m right here!”
As they withered or withdrew, the copies seemed to snarl at the three men. ”A setback, but not the end of things!”
Before joining Goldlewis' assault against the copy, Therion took Edward by the collar for the second time that day and dragged him out of the things range in case it morphed again. He doubted it would help with whatever magic they seemed to be using though. Unfortunately with no way to clear the mark he offered instead, "You need me to call Sandalphon?"
The thief’s main response to this was coughing as the man he was dragging regained motor control just in time to prevent himself from drowning in his own blood. While the man was by no means a regular human in terms of durability, he was a back line fighter, and it showed. Still, the man managed to haul himself to his feet, as well as shake his head at the suggestion. Instead, while backing further off from the fight, he waved a hand, brought up the armory screen, and summoned himself a health potion from their (admittedly limited) stocks before downing it. It would keep him in the fight, but it would not stem the bleeding.
Still, it served as a reminder that the two healers were not the only access to recovery they had. The revelation did not seem to please A. ”Patched up, if only to bleed again.”
The team received one more stroke of luck, at least, as the strength of Goldlewis Dickinson proved sufficient to destroy the grotesque doppelganger, with a little help from the golems of course. Its rather sickening demise meant that all four copies had been felled in relatively quick succession, which seemed to the Seekers like a victory until four more burst up from the ground, far too close to the company of heroes for comfort.
”Hmph, well well. He has a weakness after all.” Ganondorf said with a smirk. The victory was short-lived, but enough of a hint that they were on the right track.
”Squirming, contorting, and ever-expanding!” Two of the doppelgangers immediately split apart, revealing their imperfection. Instead of attacking, however, all four transformed with We Are the Same, swelling up with abominable cohesion. Now the perfect and imperfect reflections could no longer be told apart, and as they began to move in an eldritch shuffle, all the Seekers’ stress began to rise.
Before they could get mixed up however, Edward acted, spending one of his 4 mana cells to cast Designate Target upon one of the imperfections. A blood red aura surrounded it, briefly increasing its vulnerability to damage, and also afflicting it with his own mark debuff for 9 seconds, which increased his allies accuracy when targeting it.
He then promptly shot it with his magelock pistol, keen eyes and the mark debuff ensuring that it sailed unerringly towards the skull of the targeted foe. Then he promptly took off at a run to get space between him and the monsters that had marked him for death, flames igniting around him as he hot footed it away.
His golems, a lot less artfully than their creator, also got stuck in. Their long weapons made the mobility of the dancing devils a lot less of an issue as they could simply reach over the heads of the non designated copies to stab the one that stood out amongst the crowd. Given A’s complete lack of interest in attacking them, they paid absolutely 0 attention to their own protection, acting more or less as if the other copies did not exist as they hunted the one Edward wanted dead.
Midna’s Darknut however did not handle the swirling copies well at all, heavy blows hitting naught but the bark of the flesh tree they were dancing over.
Goldlewis was nothing if not a man who followed orders. Once he realized what sort of game was afoot, he followed Edward’s mark to smash the loathsome creature with a mighty swing of his coffin.
With its ruse laid bare by the mark, the not-so-hidden imperfect copy was laid low in moments, leaving only three possible targets left. Still, every second counted when their mere existence steadily gnawed away at the Seekers’ sanity. ”A momentary abatement…”
”So, we’re playing one of those ‘spot the difference’ games?” Captain Falcon said, trying to shake off the stress. ”Except now he’s decided to start cheating. Ha, classic shell game if I’ve ever seen one. Ryuugeki Sen!” He hurled a couple of fire discs from his arms at one of the deformed doppelgangers, then rushed in close with a follow up ”Ryuugeki Ken!”
The Warlord was gritting his teeth. Ganondorf was tough enough to deal with stress like this to an extent. But even the Great King of Evil had his limits, loathe as he was to admit to them. Meanwhile, he noticed that his Moblins were all dispatched, likely unable to handle the stress attacks. Still, the Warlord gripped his trident and charged it with dark energy, seeking to use Mortal Coil in order to forcibly yank one of the abominable doppelgangers into his clutches for a follow up strike.
With three of four copies engaged it stood to reason that Therion would target the last. However, given the mental strain the multiple As were each putting on them, he knew that the sooner they were all put down the better. To that end his speed would serve him a lot better than his strength. Therion zipped over to Ganondorf at the same time that the man reeled in the copy with his three pronged harpoon. As he moved the thief drew a trio of throwing knives from his person and twisted to throw at the copy Captain Falcon was going for. By the time the bounty hunter got to it the blades, with a soft silvery glow to them, were jutting out of it. And once Ganondorf had his own copy in front of him and had struck out at it, Therion was already there to drive his dagger into it.
Thanks to Therion’s assistance in finishing them off, the other Seekers managed to put two out of the three leftover doppelgangers down in mercifully short order. Since one priority target had been dispatched already, there was only one correct answer left, but fortune smiled on the team as the one Ganondorf picked out turned out to be the other Imperfect Reflection. Though sheer chance meant that the Seekers hadn’t dealt with the mental assault optimally, evidenced by the frayed edges of their minds, it could have gone much worse. With the flawed copy’s much-deserved destruction, a sort of psychic feedback brought We Are the Same to an abrupt end, the untouched doppelganger forcefully returned to its original form and left dazed. ”How quickly the tide turns…” he groaned.
Nevertheless, Time Heals All restored it, and after a brief delay three more copies sprang up, their ascent somewhat more laborious than before. ”The blood pumps, the limbs obey!” Again, two of them split apart, but these newest imperfections seemed even less complete than their predecessors. Though Goldlewis had been hoping for a turning point by now, he could only assume that this degradation indicated some sort of progress. He and the others just needed to keep up the pressure.
“I can do this all day!” While the Consul’s replicated, Goldlewis reached into his own bag of tricks and withdrew a Thunderbird from within his coffin. The spiky drone whirred forward like a miniature chopper to explode against one of the imperfect copies, and the veteran followed in his footsteps. He did not approach recklessly, though, and when the monster lashed out with It Chooses, Goldlewis stopped short to block. Unfortunately, mitigating the damage did not diminish the mark or the stun, and in an instant Goldlewis found himself struggling to stand. “Agh, dag…nabbit…!” He reeled as the other horror coiled up its tentacle for It Chooses as well, and the perfect reflections readied their Reunions.
Knowing exactly how much the incoming attack could hurt, Edward had all the golems attempt to stab specifically the reeled back tentacle, aiming to have them cripple or even impale the limb inorder to disrupt the attack. Having fallen back, and being unwilling to fire into the imminent mass of melee fighters with his short ranged pistol, left Edward out of position to directly deal damage himself. As such, instead, the man instead summoned his Pyrobat striker and had it swoop above the brawl in-order unleash a gout of flame from directly on top of one of the imperfect copies, thus reducing the risk of friendly fire.
Since he wouldn't be able to drag a man as large as Goldlewis out of immediate danger, Therion moved with the copper golems to prevent the second imperfect copy from lashing out at the coffin wielding man too. His limbs were tense and a stress headache was well underway, but he fought through it to plunge the stinging dagger into the mutated Consul until it fell.
”All day, huh?” Captain Falcon quipped as he shook off his stress damage and re-entered his fighting stance. ”Well, so can I!” He launched into a sprint toward one of the remaining Imperfect Reflections and flew right into it with a ”Falcon Kick!” That only served as an opener for a litany of follow ups. First a blinding series of kicks in the form a ”Gen’ei Kyaku!” That led into a ”Ryuuzanshou!” That launched the Imperfect up with a backflip kick that Falcon then followed up with one more technique, leaping up to grapple the Reflection and unleash an explosive Raptor Dive to send it hurtling back down. ”Yes!”
Nearby, Ganondorf was similarly regaining his vigor as he used his Mortal Coil to harpoon the last remaining Imperfect Reflection and pulled it into his clutches. ”Die, Moebius!” The Warlord roared as he caught the incoming Reflection and proceeded to treat it to an explosive Flame Choke that slammed the reflection onto the ground at his feet. Then with a wicked laugh the King of Evil leapt straight up into the air with Bullet Jump before he threw his trident straight back down to the ground to skewer the Reflection before the weapon then attracted a blast of summoned lightning just for good measure.
When the fifth abomination fell, the remaining perfect copies shuddered as if stricken. Then all four began to melt, and after a few seconds all that remained of the aberrant quartet were heaps of eldritch flesh on the floor.
